Now that Dragonflight is mostly over and the epilogue quests were in the patch a couple of weeks ago I feel it is a good time to review the Primalist’s motivations. When I refer to the Primalists I do not simply mean their leaders the Incarnates but the forces that serve them and their ideals.
The bulk of the Primalists forces we fight are mortals who have decided to join up with the cause of the Incarnates. Like previous enemy underlings we have fought they are essentially the fodder we kill but that does not mean they have to be dull. I’d like to go over some main factors and comparisons to other in-game forces we have fought that felt like they had more substance.
Motivation:
The Primalists motivations are unclear for the mortal races joining them. The only one that displays any motivation is Kurog Grimtotem who seems to be a true believer in the Incarnate’s cause of returning to the elements. All the other mortal Primalists it does not feel clear and at times jarring when they are so devoted but not known why. I want to give some examples of other groups in WoW that better show motivation as a comparison.
• Cult of the damned had many who wanted to gain immortality and it was a way to get power. It is a simple motivation but it is an apparent one.
• Twilight’s Hammer were run out of both wanting power and others being afraid. There is the implication that Deathwing destroyed the park in Stormwind to gather more people to go to Archbishop Benedictus who would recruit more to the Twilight’s Hammer.
• Druids of the Flame in Dragonflight itself had good motivation with Norana Moonlight and Firoden gathering elves who want their races place in the world back and immortality after all the losses they have suffered.
• The Dragonkin Primalists have better motivation compared to their mortal counterparts with feeling like the aspects abandoned them for thousands of years then suddenly came back and expected them to serve.
Recruitment:
As far as the players know both with in-game knowledge and out the mortals serving the Primalists came from nowhere and were somehow a super secret organization. There was no recruitment spree. I do not attribute this to them being a newly introduced enemy as we do not see their recruitment anywhere in the pre-patch or during the expansion. For example, the Twilight’s Hammer had a big recruitment spree during the Shattering pre-patch event which made sense, and I felt something similar could have been done during Razsageth’s storms for the pre-patch.
Another example is the Cult of the Damned who actively recruit people even during the post-launch experience of Wrath like in the quest chain with Thassarian in Borean Tundra. One of my favorites is learning how Malygos recruited some of his forces by extortion as shown by Captain Malin’s letter to her father. This is something I wish was showed more in the expansion.
Where are the good ones?:
In the quest Primalist Directive (https://www.wowhead.com/quest=76344/primalist-directive) you help sway primalists who are loyal to one of the Claw’s of Vyranoth who is a proto-dragon. Some of them do leave the primalists because of their loyalty to Terro, though it is not clear why these mortals were so devoted to their proto-drake captain. The point is that they exist yet we don’t really interact with any named ones who explain why they joined in the first place.
So that raises the question, where are the primalists whose motivations would be more along the lines of Vyranoth and would want to join her? Aside from the Claws of Vyranoth no other Primalist forces defect to fight again Fyrakk. I wish there was some NPC dialogue regarding this.
As I mentioned the druids of the flame earlier an elf named Key’nael talks about how Firoden, former herbalism trainer, recruited them after the burning of Teldrassil (Firoden so far has not shown up himself thus far). These druids of the flame broke off realizing they were lured in with false promises while being disillusioned from their trauma. Their motivations in the Emerald Dream patch were refreshing to hear about.
I’d wanted to talk about this since I like the motivations of armies in wow and not just their leaders. Enemies like the Mantid, Mogu, Arrakoa, the Djardin and the ones I mentioned earlier always have intrigued me. I am hoping that in the future there isn’t a repeat of something like the Primalists mortal forces.